Singh’s Report Card Vague on Corruption

Headlines this morning said that fighting graft was the theme of the dinner Sunday night that marked the release of the government’s report on the second year of its term. But the report is vague on how the government will accomplish that and mainly repeats previous pledges.

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Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi released the government’s report on the second year of its term.

“The year 2010 saw the conjunction of several developments related to the 2G spectrum, procurement and contracting issues related to the Commonwealth Games, and similar issues in state governments,” said Mr. Singh in his foreword to the report. “Many of these issues have surfaced because of our system of institutional oversight and a free press and to that extent reflect the strength of the system.”

The Congress-led government puts out a report of this sort each year, but this one was especially significant, coming as it did after a spate of corruption allegations and election results that showed that voters, at least in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, are fed up with graft in Indian politics.

The 118 pages of documents recapped the Congress Party-led government’s achievements and laid out plans for the coming year, devoting four pages to governance reforms and anti-corruption measures. Many of the proposed reforms are focused on technology, such as a proposal to computerize state treasury departments. There are also plans to make the judicial system more efficient, based on the logic that people will be less tempted to pay bribes if they can resolve disputes quickly in court.

On corruption, specifically, the report noted mainly that a special group of ministers continues to cogitate on reducing the discretionary powers of ministers and undertaking other administrative reforms (if they don’t get a move on, they may get overtaken by a petition seeking administrative reforms that was filed earlier this year before the Supreme Court).

Elsewhere, in the section on its road building efforts, the government said the National Highways Authority of India was instituting a cash reward for people reporting cases of corruption.

Many of the anti-corruption steps described in the report may seem less than weighty, or like they may take a very long time, such as proposed legislation to protect whistle-blowers and reduce foreign bribery. In the meantime, though, government officials can point to the large number of senior officials cooling their heels in the capital’s jail—a testament to India’s resolve to prosecute corruption cases.

The section on investment climate continues to tout an achievement that wasn’t impressive even the first time it was mentioned—the consolidating of all India’s different foreign investment policies into one document. The other achievement: An initiative called “Invest India” has garnered about $300 million of investment since it was begun two years ago.